


The Cape Canaveral Caper

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Adventure, Brotp, Buddies, Fluff, Gen, Humor, John and Virgil, bros, claw machine antics, percocet/redheads, shrimp caesar salad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 03:58:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4464602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Virgil and John never really hang out. Wonder why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and for all that they have in common

Give the boys a week off for an Aerospace conference in the states. Florida, Cape Canaveral. Scott’s got old Air Force buddies to meet up with, John’s giving a handful of lectures at the Kennedy Space Center. Alan and Gordon will take any excuse to goof off, to loaf around town like idle tourists. Skateboards have been procured. Knees and elbows are scraped to shreds. The two youngest are all sunburn and extra freckles, tan-lines and sun-kissed blond hair. And Virgil’s just filling in, the way he always does. Being that extra pair of hands, the middle child, the odd one out.

Not that he minds. It suits him. Virgil doesn’t mind rounding out a quartet of Scott’s buddies for a game of golf, or going surfing with Gordon when John steals Alan away for a seminar on rocketry. He doesn’t mind babysitting, reining in the Terrible Twosome, when Alan and Gordon are tripping over each other trying to get onto the boardwalk roller coaster, both full of cotton candy and popcorn and corn dogs, and whatever other deep-fried horribleness they’ve gotten their hands on. A vacation’s a vacation.

He and John have it in common that they both like their solitude, though they like it in different ways. John likes to be alone in the way that lets him tolerate months on end without another human being for miles. Virgil likes to be alone in the way a painter on the sidewalk is alone, with the world moving around him, surrounded by life and yet ensconced in solitude. He’s brought pastels, a small watercolour kit, and if there’s no one who needs him, Virgil likes to park himself outside their beachfront hotel and watch the world going by. When a particularly bright or beautiful part of the world catches his eye, he snags pieces of it in impressionistic smudges of colour, quick little bits of art. When they’re dry, he hands them out to anyone who stops and takes an interest.

It’s late afternoon of the second to last day of the trip, when he catches John watching him, a few paces back with his hands in his pockets, still in rolled up oxford shirt sleeves and khakis, peering over his younger brother’s shoulder with polite interest.

“Looks nice,” John comments, when Virgil finally notices him, pushing a pair of wire-framed glasses up his nose with a fingertip. “I’ve never understood how you do that.”

“Well, you wasted your childhood on telescopes and circuit boards, I wasted mine on crayons and fingerpaint.”

“Are the green bits supposed to be palm trees?”

“…aaaaaand, that’s why I’m glad you stuck to circuit boards.”

Virgil and John can sometimes go as long as a week without saying a word to one another outside of work. It’s not enmity. It’s not even on purpose. And it’s not that they aren’t close. It’s just a mutual understanding that neither of them are particularly good at small talk.

Alan and Gordon both tend to call John up just to chat and will babble about whatever comes to mind, and John rarely has to do more than just nod along. Scott and Grandma tend to call John to check up on him, pester him about food and sleep and general health and welfare. But even when John’s back home with both feet on the ground, he and Virgil rarely exchange more than a nod or a wave from across the room, both going about their respective business. Oddly, they’ve got too much in common to really have much to say to each other.

Still, sometimes one or the other of the will go out of his way to make the connection, and apparently it’s John’s turn. “Did you want to grab dinner? You know how we never hang out. You and me. Scott’s in a meeting with some GDF officer, and last I saw, Alan and Gordon had about ten pounds worth of quarters between them and headed for that twenty-four hour arcade they found.”

“What, you didn’t get an invite?”

John cracks a ghost of a grin, and shrugs, “They brought me along already. I emptied their claw machine that first day and got banned. I think Al and Gordon are out for revenge.”

Virgil chuckles, “What, by dumping a couple hundred dollars worth of quarters into the place?”

“All right, so they’ve got kind of a misplaced sense of justice. But they  _mean_ well. At least it’ll keep them out of trouble. Come on, there’s a seafood place I’ve been told about around the corner from where they are, we can pick them up when we get done.”

Virgil wipes a smudge of paint off his thumb on knee of his jeans and squints at the painting. Near enough to done, anyway. He starts to pack up. “Drinks after?”

This gets a wary arch of a ginger eyebrow, and with good reason, after The Jello-Shot Incident of 2057. Gordon’s twenty-first birthday had been a hell of a night, still lauded in song and story around Christmastime, when Grandma makes liquor soaked bonbons and John goes about three shades paler at the mere mention of the word “rum”. It was a miracle none of them had gone blind. “One or two, I’m supposed to tell about two hundred NASA engineers about TB5’s orbital propulsion systems tomorrow morning, and I’d really rather not be hungover.”

Grinning, Virgil folds up his travel easel and hefts it over his shoulder. “Johnny, telling two hundred NASA engineers about your orbital propulsion systems sounds like the  _living equivalent_  of a hangover. Did Scott take the car?”

“Think so. Keys’ll be in your room if he didn’t, anyway, but I don’t think it’s too far to walk. I’ll let Alan and Gordon know where we’ll be.”

Virgil nods, and is privately glad for John and the way he’s the only one who might be even more responsible than he is himself. It’s a nice change of pace. “Roger, John. I’m gonna get changed, I’ll meet you at the car.”

Scott has, in fact, left the keys. This is mostly because Virgil hid them in his sock drawer and forced the eldest to get a cab or risk being late. Virgil occasionally misses the mainland, misses driving. He and Alan have that in common, and it’s always seemed the very paramount of unfairness that as soon as the youngest had gotten his license, he’d been picked up and moved to an island in the middle of the South Pacific. Virgil makes the mental note to take Alan driving up the coast tomorrow, and to ditch Gordon at John’s engineering lecture. He borrows one of Gordon’s more tasteful shirts, stretches the seams a little across his broad shoulders, and after he meets John at the rental car in the parking lot behind the hotel, they take the scenic route along the waterfront.

It’s a classy little bistro, almost right on the water at the end of the boardwalk, and not too busy. They get seated quickly, in a quiet corner, and once the ice breaks, Virgil and John have the sort of conversation they almost never have. Companionable, friendly, a good long talk over a leisurely dinner. Virgil cracks his way through an entire pound of crab legs, jalapeno poppers, a baked potato and a beer, and John refrains from comment over a caesar salad with shrimp and a glass of wine.

It’s really a shame they don’t talk more often. Dinner gives way to drinks—John with their father’s handed-down preference for Glenlivet Scotch and Virgil with a vodka cranberry in deference to their mother. Pleasant chatter gives way to the deeper things, the talk about their absent father, and about how Scott’s holding up in his stead. About how Gordon’s still a little wild and defiant, about how Alan still seems a little lost, sometimes, underneath the bravado. About work, but in the abstract. How it’s hard, but worth it. How they’re both happy with what they do.

The bill gets paid, and the arcade where Alan and Gordon are is a few blocks down. They’ll collect the younger two and walk back to the car. Probably they’ll want to get ice cream or something, probably both John and Virgil could be talked into it. Maybe they’ll go and pick up Scott. It’s a nice night, late summer, cooled by the wind off the ocean. Everything’s good, they’re both happy, mildly, pleasantly buzzed, and resolving to try and have at least one more actual conversation before Christmastime rolls around—and then there’s a sharp, terrified scream from an alleyway, about ten yards ahead.

And for all that they have in common, this is where John and Virgil are different. A scream is Virgil’s call to snap into action, to pound the pavement and close the distance between him and whoever needs his help. It’s John’s cue to stop, to hold everything and figure out a course of action. To take up his chosen position, high above the situation, and figure out how best he can help whoever needs him before he makes any move at all.

But they’re on the ground, and it’s Virgil’s territory, and he snags his older brother by the arm, with a hissed, “Come on!” Like it’s sturdy, scrappy Gordon he’s got for backup, and not willowy, cautious John.

Still, it’s hardwired into all of them to help people in trouble. Even if their initial impulses are different, John’s right on Virgil’s heels as his younger brother rounds the corner into an alley, where a large, imposing figure is struggling with someone who’s crying and frightened, pinned up against a dumpster and trying to break free. Virgil’s like a bull penned up before a rodeo, and he seems to _loom_  at the end of the alley, as he roars, “ _Hey!_ ”

Then he  _charges_. He practically scrapes the ground with the toe of his boot, and goes bulling his way into the fray. John hangs back, because two-hundred and thirty pounds of righteously angry Virgil is more than enough to handle a fight, and this really isn’t John’s area. He’s waiting for his chance to dart in and get a hold of the victim, to tell her to get some place safe, call the police.

Virgil has the mugger by the back of the collar, and flings him effortlessly away from the woman, scrabbling on the ground trying to gather up her purse. It’s funny, people’s priorities. John’s always been a little bit thrown off by the things people think are important in crises. He ducks into the alley after Virgil, gets to the woman’s side, hovering and protective. Virgil’s in full combat mode, he’s pounced on the halfway downed assailant, and plants a firm kick to the man’s stomach before he can regain his feet.

“You’re okay, ma'am,” he assures the lady, getting a hold of her elbows and helping her to her feet. Because she seems to think it’s important, he snatches up her purse, presses it into her hands. “Get out of here, run, find somewhere safe. Call the police.”

She takes off. Then there’s a terrifying squeal of pain and John’s gaze jerks up towards his brother, who’s taken things a step further, grinding the heel of his boot into the back of the would-be thief’s knee. And abruptly this is John’s job. Knowing when to call it off, and he snaps into command. “Virgil,  _stop_!”

Virgil does, immediately stumbling backward, yanked away from that raw, berserker edge by the steel in John’s tone, another thing passed down from their father. Scott has it too. As far as John’s concerned, their job is done, time to disengage.

The mugger scrambles away from Virgil, struggles to his feet, cursing and spitting. His gaze darts wildly around the alley, and he bolts straight for John, unwittingly blocking the only way out. He shoves the redhead out of his way and sends him sprawling with a pained, startled shout, headlong into a collection of trash cans.

That’s cued Virgil back into action. He scrambles for his brother, hauls him to his feet and then gives his elbow another tug before dashing off, shouting over his shoulder, “C'mon, we can get him!”

They’re not cops. But Virgil’s got that strict sense of justice, and that’s what  _he_  got from their father. John’s head is buzzing with fifteen year old Scotch and adrenaline, and well–no one  _else_  is going to go after the guy. Ignoring the sharp, bruising pain of the place where the mugger shoved him, John breaks out of the alley, right on Virgil’s heels again.

After only a few moments, still stumbling, sprinting after Virgil, he’s leaving a trail of smudged red footprints on the sidewalk behind him.


	2. $134.75 worth of quarters in an Egyptian cotton pillowcase

There’s some sort of commotion further down the street as Gordon and Alan amble out of the arcade’s front doors. And then a piercing, familiar whistle, the one Virgil uses to get his little brothers’ attention when it’s important.

“Hey!  _Gordon!_  The guy in red!”

Virgil’s shout catches Gordon just as he and Alan cross the threshold of the bright arcade doors, multi-coloured lights and chiptunes haloing and heralding their exit. Alan’s got both arms full of stuffed animals, Gordon’s carrying a heavy hotel pillowcase slung over his shoulder. He and Virgil are practically psychic in the way they work together, and when Gordon spots the guy-in-red barreling down the sidewalk towards him, Virgil and John hot on his heels—well. He takes the only natural course of action, winds back, and socks the redshirt full in the face with $134.75 worth of quarters in an Egyptian cotton pillowcase. The man drops like a rock, and sends a bloodied knife skittering across the pavement. For good measure, Gordon drops the bag of quarters on his head, “—and  _stay_ down!”

They’ve drawn attention from other people on the street now, and Gordon certainly hopes he’s just broken the face of someone who deserved it. Virgil comes trotting to a halt in front of him, huffing slightly and bright-eyed with that adrenaline high that Gordon’s all too familiar with. “Virge?” he prompts, and jerks a thumb at the guy on the ground, a whimpering mess of pain and misfortune and  _hopefully_  justice. Gordon bites his lower lip. “Am I on the side of the good and the just here, or are there assault charges in my not too distant future?”

“Mugger. Grabbed a lady.”

Gordon’s immediately irritated, and plants a foot in the middle of the mugger’s back before he can even attempt to get up. “Dude,  _so_  not okay. Jeez. Cops’re coming?”

Virgil doesn’t know, and he glances back at John, doubled over a few feet behind him and clutching at a stitch in his side, gasping. “…was gonna say ask the comms guy, but he’s  _way_  behind. Man, Johnny, outta shape much? Did you tell the lady to call the cops?”

“Cops?” Alan’s still got an armful of brightly coloured plushies, and he’s a few moments behind completely understanding what’s just happened. He blinks as he looks between the other three. His gaze lingers for a moment on John, still with that stitch in his side, and all of a sudden Alan’s ahead of the curve, dropping all of his stuffed toys and diving for his older brother as John crumples to his knees. “Hey! Hey, Johnny, whoa— _whoa_ , John! Virgil, he’s  _bleeding—_ what—”

A knife had gone skittering out of the man’s hand when Gordon had dropped him.

Virgil spins on his heel to the sight of John, knelt on the ground with Alan holding his shoulders, both his palms and the right hip of his blue oxford shirt darkly stained in the light of dusk. Bright, bloody red trails down his pant leg. He’s staring a little dazedly at his hands, and one of them plucks feebly at the hem of his shirt, trying to see the damage.

“… _oh_ ,” a little vague, a little faint. And then, thoroughly out of character for calm, even-tempered John, “Shit.” John gives a little further, sitting down hard on the ground. Reflexively Alan follows him down, keeps him from keeling over entirely.

Then Virgil’s kneeling next to him, pulling off his (Gordon’s) shirt and bundling it into a makeshift bandage. He finds the gash in John’s pale blue dress shirt, tugs the sticky fabric up and swabs at the wound in his side, trying to get a better look. Gash, not a puncture; slashed and not stabbed. Good. Good, that’s good. Probably only muscle damage, superficial. Gordon’s directing a nearby bystander to call an ambulance, still with a foot planted on the mugger’s back.

The small crowd that’s gathered produces two burly, no-nonsense looking gentlemen, and between the two of them they take over custody of the thief, citizen’s arrest, freeing Gordon up to come hover anxiously by his brothers. There are already sirens ringing distantly down the street, but the short, yelping barks of police sirens, not the up and down wail of an ambulance.

“… _ow_.” John’s breath catches on the word, pained, and then ratchets up into panicked gulps of air. “W-wh… _ow._ What _…_ _wh…_ hhhn.  _Ow_.”

It’s a little harder to remain even-keeled in an emergency when it’s one of their own, but Virgil keeps his head. “Okay. Okay, so he had a knife. It’s all right, doesn’t even look that bad. Easy, John.”

Gordon pipes up, “Medics’ll be here any minute, J, just hang on.”

There’s no answer outside of a low, protesting groan from John, his hands trembling as he tries to push away the brightly patterned pad of fabric Virgil positions against his side. Alan’s grimacing as he catches one of John’s wrists, pulls his hand back.

“You’re okay, I gotcha,” Alan volunteers, and his hands shift, take more of his brother’s weight, looping an arm around John’s chest from behind and letting the redhead lean into him.

John’s nine years older than Alan is, twenty-seven to Al’s skinny, boyish eighteen, but he sags weakly against the youngest. And then, with as much vehemence as he can muster, faintly accusatory, “ _Ow_ , Virgil.” As though this wasn’t already clear.

“I know, I know, Johnny. It’s okay, you’ll be okay.” Virgil starts, to try to warn him, to tell him to brace himself for the pain of pressure he’s about to put against the bleeding gash in his brother’s side. He winces in preemptive sympathy. “Gotta put some pressure on it, it’s gonna hurt like hell.”

Gordon’s got a hand on Virgil’s shoulder, peering over to supervise, and he curses under his breath, then murmurs, “Ah, jeez. This is gonna suck.”

That’s an understatement. “Sorry, John,” Virgil mutters, and presses a broad palm firmly against the bandage. There’s a half-strangled yell and a brief, scrabbling struggle to escape, but then the shock of pain wins out and then John’s out like a light. His head snaps limply back, caught by Alan’s shoulder behind him, and then his face drops to rest against Alan’s collarbone.

Alan looks up at Virgil, and he’s plainly a little spooked by this development. “Virg? Virgil, is he…”

“It’s just the pain, Al, he’s okay,” Virgil assures the baby of the family, who’s always a bit more afraid than he ever likes to admit. Virgil and John had just finished discussing this over drinks, not even half an hour ago. Alan always needs a little bit of extra reassurance. “It’s not that bad, not deep. They’ll stitch him up and put some pain meds in him, we’ll be back at the hotel before midnight.”

There’s a collective sigh of sympathetic relief, and the ambulance sirens begin to be audible. With one hand still firmly braced against the bandage, Virgil lifts the other to gently pat his older brother’s pale cheek, though this is cold comfort.

Gordon clears his throat pointedly. “Someone’s gotta call Scott, and it’s not gonna be me,” he comments, and looks away, scanning the street for any sign of an ambulance. They’re all halfway paramedics anyway, any one of them would’ve known what to do, but it’s dark and dirty in the middle of the sidewalk, and the sooner they get John looked at properly, the better.

Alan blanches, and pipes up in agreement. “Not it!”

“Shut up, both of you,” Virgil growls, but cedes the point. He’ll make the call, it’s only fair, but he’s not in any hurry. “Aw, Johnny,” he sighs, finally. “Talk about your collateral damage. God, what kind of luck, second to last night here and we have to run into a mugging.”

“Caught the guy, though,” Alan points out. “Good on you.”

“Yeah! At least I got to hit someone in the face with a sack of change. Heh. You might say I gave no  _quarter_. Right? Guys? Because of the–”

“Oh my  _god_ , Gordon. Go jump off the pier.” Alan stretches his arm out, manages to snag a small stuffed penguin from the pile of animals he’d dropped. Gently he tucks it beneath John’s elbow.

“And,” Gordon offers, mustering some brightness in his tone, in spite of the fact that one of them is passed out on the sidewalk with a knife wound in his side and the early symptoms of shock, “ _technically_  it’s not a family vacation until one of us winds up in the hospital. At least this year it’s not gonna be me!”

This gets a grin out of Alan, but Virgil just rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Gordon.”


	3. complex quintic polynomial equations

Well.

It’s still better than that time Gordon got appendicitis in Tokyo. John’s the only who speaks fluent Japanese, and he’d been on the other side of the city at rush hour, when Virgil and Gordon had stumbled into Scott’s hotel room. The middle child had heaved the feverish, sobbing blond through the door, dropped him on the bed and said to call an ambulance. They’d had to call John and patch his personal translation through to Gordon, who refused to talk to anybody he didn’t know, and was about 90% certain he was about to die. Granted, he’d been right, operated on only an hour or so before his appendix would likely have burst.  _That_  had been awful. Compared to that, John with what amounts to a basic flesh wound is relatively minor.

Gordon probably agrees and Scott makes a mental note to ask him, as he rounds the corner and peeks into the hospital room he’s been directed to.

Virgil’s still giving a statement to the police, but Alan’s sat at the foot of the bed cross-legged. Gordon’s pulled up a chair and is balancing on the two back legs. There are about fifteen stuffed animals of various unnatural colours for their species, mostly on the bed. Alan’s arranging and rearranging them, and John’s sat up and facing him, concentrating intently on the placement of each individual toy.

That’s something, anyway.

“Hiya Scotty,” Gordon calls, wobbling precariously as he waves, the first to notice the eldest in the doorway. “Say, you know how John’s kinda  _not great_ with pain meds? You know? It’s that whole redhead thing, how doctors think all gingers are witches and dope ‘em too hard. Anyway. So, I said that they’d better start him on, like, a quarter tab of oxycodone. I said that, right Al?”

Alan nods enthusiastically, and rescues a small bear before it topples to the floor when John shifts his knee beneath the blankets. “Oh, yeah, he totally said that. Yup, I said so too. Remember when he had his wisdom teeth out? I said it was just like that.”

Gordon scoots his chair a little, adjusts the angle and tips backwards again. “Thank you, Al. Anyway, just so you’re aware, this is  _totally not my fault_ , because I told them not to, but I think they still gave him a full one.”

 _Oh boy._  Scott enters the room cautiously and pulls a second chair up to the bed. He has to wave to get the redhead’s attention. “Hey, Johnny? John, how’re you feeling?”

Scott gets a bright-eyed, owlish tilt of the head from his second brother and then he’s promptly shushed. “Shhh. Scott. Hi. Shh, though. I’m very busy. Al. Gimme the squid. See, this is the—Al, it’s  _not funny_ —listen, it only works if I have _both_ the squids, Allie. It has to be a  _binary system_. Right? Right, okay. Alan. Alan, so you have to put the penguin back —”

“I didn’t move the penguin,  _you_  did,” Alan answers patiently, but returns the penguin to wherever it’s supposed to be. John isn’t satisfied, and tweaks the positioning, a tiny blue penguin in the middle of the hospital bed, while he balances two slightly larger stuffed squids on either knee.

Well, he  _seems_  all right, anyway, though Scott catches a glimpse of bloodied bandage at his hip, as he leans forward in bed, hospital gown exposing the hem of his boxers. “Hey, John, you know how you got stabbed? Was kinda hoping we might have a word about that?”

“Mm'nope. Ask Virgil. Busy. Alan. Look, if the gravitational forces aren’t equivalent then the system breaks down into  _complete_  chaos and none of the iterations make sense, right? That’s why it has to be  _both squids_ , Alan, and it is  _very important_  to know where the penguin is. Okay? Okay. Now  _this_  is where Lagrangian points and centripetal force come in—”

Alan’s having to stifle his laughter with both hands clamped over his mouth as John starts spiraling off through complex quintic polynomial equations, slender fingers moving a little triad of stuffed animals in what he clearly thinks is the representation of some higher order of astrophysics. Mostly it’s just adorable.

Scott clears his thoat. “Uh, John?”

“ _Shh!_ ” This gets an irritated green-eyed glare and Alan’s dissolving into tears at the end of the bed. “Okay, but  _now_  though. Lunar injection, right? Listen. Listen, Allie, d'you know your free-return trajectories, ‘cuz this isn’t going to make any sense if you don’t. You did, um, you did translunar injection right? Basic principles are all the same—”

Scott pauses and gives Gordon a helpless glance from across the room. “What’s he stuck on? I just wanted to ask him what happened.”

Gordon snorts with laughter from the other side of the bed. “Forget it, Scott. His doctor came in and I dropped a dumb pick-up line on her, and now the Professor’s gone off about the three body problem.”

Alan giggles, unabashedly, “It wasn’t going to  _work_ , Gordon, it’s like the lamest line in the book, 'if I said you had a nice body—’,”

“—would you let me calculate the orbital vectors necessary to achieve a stable balance of gravitational relationships?” Gordon finishes, and smirks at John. “Was only trying to hit on your doctor, J. Way to shut me down.”

“Don’t flirt with my doctor. You’re not a doctor.” This, instead of everything Scott’s said, is what pulls John off track, and he throws a plush goose at Gordon. This misses, predictably. “I have  _doctorates_. I’m the doctor. I’m  _two doctors._ That’s twice as many doctors.  _You_  aren’t even any doctors at all.”

“Sure, Johnny, sure. That’s exactly how it works.”

Now he’s pouting and Alan’s trying to get his breath back at the end of the bed. Scott rolls his eyes at Gordon, and feels more than a little bad for John, who would be  _mortified_  if he were even remotely cognizant of what he was saying. “Aw, leave him alone, Gordon. John, do you want to maybe start getting ready to get out of here? I need to talk to your doctor, but probably we can head back to the hotel—”

“She wasn’t a real doctor anyway. She didn’t even give any lectures. Just drugs. I’m giving a  _lecture_. For NASA.”

Gordon laughs, and tilts his chair to land flat on the floor. “Oh my god, I would trade TB4 to see you give your lecture right now. This is better than my jello-shot birthday. But nah, J. You’re gonna pass out for like the next eighteen hours once the euphoria wears off. Lecture’s cancelled. But hey, here, this’ll make you feel better–Johnny, why’s Pluto not a planet anymore? I really think Pluto should still be a planet.”

“Gordon,  _oh my god_. This is why you and I never talk about anything that  _matters_.” And he’s off again as Scott sighs, and gets up to go figure out how to get him discharged. 

Still. Better than appendicitis in Tokyo. They hadn’t been able to get Gordon to shut up about Giant Squids for a solid four hours.


	4. 'I finally went to Cape Canaveral and all I got was this lousy knife wound’

There’s just no  _point_  to seagulls.

Or at least, there’s no point that John can discern, they seem to exist purely to try and scream their way into his aching skull. He lies awake for a very long while, thinking about how much he hates seagulls and watching the minutes on the digital clock by the bedside tick upward.

The 7:42 on the clock belongs to the evening and not the morning, but it takes him a minute to put this together with the fact that the sun is setting outside the hotel room window. Further, he’s wearing a heather grey t-shirt that he has to stare at for a while, trying to figure out when he acquired it.

 

> NASA!
> 
> v_f = v_i+ integral_0^t (F(t_1))/(m(t_1)) dt_1 = v_i+ integral_0^t ((dp(t_1))/(dt_1))/(m(t_1)) dt_1 = v_i-v_e integral_0^t ((dm(t_1))/(dt_1))/(m(t_1)) dt_1 = v_i+v_e log((m(0))/(m(t))) 
> 
> “It’s  _just_  rocket science”

Rocket science is difficult to do, when it’s upside down and on one’s torso, but he knows the equation, anyway. This also seems to be rocket  _math_ , if he’s being technical and John Tracy is just about always being technical. Generally he likes his t-shirts to be semantically accurate, so he’s not sure where this one came from.

Technically it’s quarter to eight in the evening, and he’s missed his NASA lecture. This is very disappointing. It takes another few minutes to convince himself it’s worthwhile, but eventually he drags himself out of bed, and wanders into the hotel suite he’s sharing with Virgil and Scott. Scott’s absent, but Virgil’s there, sprawled out on the couch with the remote, looking for something to watch on TV. He looks up and gives his brother a little half-wave as John drops into an armchair with a faint groan.

“I think I remember saying ‘one or two drinks’, Virge,” John accuses, rubbing his eyes and sighing. Dry mouth, pounding headache, sore all over, and a full twelve hours more sleep than he’d planned on getting. This hadn’t been the plan. “God, this is embarrassing. I’m gonna have to call the Space Center director and apologize.”

Virgil tosses the remote aside and rolls over to look at him, cocking an eyebrow quizzically. “It  _was_  one drink. It was a thirty dollar scotch and we talked about how dad taught you that. How if you don’t drink often, when you do, you oughta make it count? You remember telling me 'one or two drinks’, but, uh, none of the other stuff? Because there was a  _lot_  of other stuff, Johnny.”

“…what?”

“Guess Gord’s right about you and Percocet.”

“… _what_?”

Virgil sits up properly and grins at his brother. “ _Wow_ , John. Pull up your shirt.”

John’s discovery of a six inch gash across his hip demands a fairly thorough explanation of the previous night’s events, backtracking all the way to the drive to the restaurant. John’s got bits and pieces, but no definitive thread connecting the whole thing together.

Virgil prompts him skeptically for information for a few minutes and receives only a blank, green-eyed stare, before giving up and suggesting, “Look, you tell me what you know, and I’ll fill in the gaps.”

“Something about a penguin?”

Virgil reaches over the back of the couch, produces a small blue penguin plush. “I wasn’t there for that, I was talking to the cops, but Al said you played out a restricted three-body system with oscillating orbits and Lagrange points and I don’t know what the hell else. Alan said you got it mostly right, which is impressive, considering you were high as a kite.”

John catches the little stuffed animal as Virgil tosses it over. “Where’d I  _get_  the penguin?”

“Gordon and Alan were at the arcade trying to get revenge on the guy who banned you for emptying out the claw machine. They spent about sixty bucks in quarters on about eight dollars worth of stuffed animals.”

John rolls his eyes, “I swear I’ve told those two, you have to have a  _system_  if you’re going to mess with claw machines. It’s a very strict cost versus benefit calculation, and if you—”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re billionaires. You’re gonna wanna repack your suitcase, by the way, they dumped all your stuff out to make room for their haul. They’re back at it, too, they still had a pillowcase full of quarters to get through. I don’t think they’ll manage, and Gordon wanted to keep it anyway, after he clocked that guy in the face with it.”

It’s not a family vacation until Gordon’s found an excuse to hit someone in the face with something. Usually it’s just Scott and a pie, or Alan and a water balloon. A sack of quarters seems a little extreme, though. “…what guy?”

“The one who stabbed you.”

A light blinks on over a dim memory, hazy with the fog of remembered adrenaline, “…the mugger? After the restaurant, we were walking—did we get  _mugged_?”

Virgil scoffs derisively, “Oh, man, I  _wish_  the bastard had tried to mug the pair of us. Would’ve been a lot more straightforward. No, it was some poor lady he’d cornered in an alley.”

John closes his eyes, rubs at his temple for a moment. “I think…I remember leaving the restaurant. We were gonna go get Gordon and Al…then…someone screamed? That’s really all I’ve got.”

“Yeah, we heard screaming, and well–you know the drill. Thunderbirds Were Go.”

John’s hand tugs his shirt up again, his long fingers probing gently over the tight, tender spot in his side. “Thunderbirds maybe could’ve held off a minute and made a  _plan_ ,” he suggests, wincing and lightly critical.

This gets a shrug and a grin. “If you’ve got your feet on the ground, John, you’ve gotta act. Could’ve been a lot worse.”

“ _Kind of_  my point.”

“All’s well that end’s well.”

“Right, Virgil. Says the guy who  _didn’t get stabbed_.”

“Oh, you don’t even remember.” Virgil’s still profoundly amused by just how completely out of the loop his brother is. “So, yeah. We got back around eleven last night. You were in and out the whole way back from the hospital, and everybody figured we’d better just put you to bed and let you sleep it off.”

John leans back in his chair, plucks at the front of the t-shirt, “And this?”

“Present from Gordon, he picked it up at the gift shop for you, since yours was all bloodied up. If you don’t like it, give it to me, I owe Gordon a new shirt.”

John shakes his head, “No, get your own. You can’t even read it, anyway.”

Virgil grins, “Can too. Derivation of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. You  _are_ aware that you’re not the only person in the world who can do higher order mathematics, right? Even Scott knows  _that_  one.”

“Yeah, well, Gordon doesn’t.” John stares broodingly at the equation and sighs a little, melancholy. “Well. If you can find one that says 'I finally went to Cape Canaveral and all I got was this lousy knife wound’, maybe I’ll swap you. Maybe I was looking forward to the damn lecture. I owe about two hundred NASA engineers an apology.”

“Nah, I covered for you. I had your notes, I gave it. I mean, I know it’s not really my field, but I muddled through. I called Brains. He helped.”

This gets John to look up, hopeful. “Yeah? How’d it go?”

Virgil makes a face, and quotes, “D'you remember I said 'the living equivalent of a hangover’? Pretty much that.”

Now John’s grinning a little bit. “But did you tell the joke about delta-v budgets, because you have to close with that. It’s important.”

“If you wrote it down, I said it. And yes. It brought down the house, because you’re a nerd, but apparently not as big a nerd as two hundred NASA engineers. They all thought I was hysterical and it was the most awkward thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“It’s a very funny joke.”

“There are two people in the family who are incapable of  _actually_  being funny, and they’re you and Gordon.”

“Oh, shut up.” But John’s properly smiling now, glad he hasn’t let anyone down. With John, it’s always the end and not the means that matter. “Thanks, Virge.”

“No problem. Got you stabbed in an alley, was the least I could do.” Virgil just chuckles at his brother. “Anyway. That was my day.”

“Well, thank you.” And then, a little wryly, one last thing— “How was dinner?”

“Good. I ate like two pounds of crab. That was pretty great. You had a salad, like a moron. That would’ve been pretty forgettable even without the pain meds.”

“Good talk?”

“About our usual.”

“Shame I forgot that. We don’t talk often enough.” John rubs his eyes and shrugs. “I need to get a bracelet or something. 'Highly sensitive to opiates, please do not drug’.”

“I’ll get it put on a t-shirt for you, before the next family vacation.” Virgil looks his older brother over, and then shifts on the couch, standing up. It’s his turn, after all. “Wanna grab dinner?” he suggests, and grins, holding out a hand to help John to his feet. “Twenty-four hour diner around the corner. Me and you, we never really hang out.”

With a hand on his side and a faintly pained expression, John accepts his brother’s help. “Gosh,” he says, dry as dust, “I wonder why.”

And Virgil slings an arm around John’s shoulders, and laughs.


End file.
